So Long To Devotion
by halfreks
Summary: This is how things fall to pieces - five worlds where Buffy stays dead.


He gets there a little too late.

If he hadn't stopped, if he hadn't brought Angel, if he had run instead of walked -

Buffy Summers. Sixteen years old. Loved by all. The funeral is short and bitter, populated by strangers and familiar faces. Xander clings onto Willow for dear life (and he's always had a twisted humour, hasn't he?) but it won't silence her crying. It's not an effort to.

And Mrs Summers (Joyce, Joyce, call me Joyce, she says) stands, face pale, mouth taut as she reads. From some book or another Buffy never read, but Willow probably has.

He runs through them in his mind. All the ways, all the fucking ways, how he could have finally, finally been the white knight, the saviour. Except he was minutes late. So he failed, with consequences. There's that.

x.

They gather in the library, (all three of them) just like Before. He cracks a pun - along the lines of 'god, who died?' - but nobody laughs. Xander didn't find it funny either.

"The Master," Giles says, polishing his glasses. There's a stutter, a pause, a reflection in his eyes, before straight-laced Giles replaces emotional Giles, a Giles with no Slayer. "What are we going to do about the Master?"

"I'll take him." It's not Xander, of course. Tall, Dark and Brooding steps out of the shadows, rings around his eyes and hand clutching his heart. Angel. Angel the hero. "I'll kill him."

Xander chokes down the bile and the 'you didn't save her,' thought (he's gotten rather good at the latter) and simply lets the scene unfold.

They fight. Angel and Giles. Maybe, Xander thinks, it's because they're both stubborn, or maybe it's because she meant the world to both of them, in different ways.

He watches Angel out of the corner of his eyes, the way he moves, the way his voice breaks and wonders if it's possible. This man (not a man, a Vampire, a beast) loved her more than him and it hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

But the worst - the worst - of it is that she loved him back.

x.

They fall into what he likes to call the Long Summer. A summer without Summers. It's funny. Really. He spends it with Willow, like he's always spent it, but it's more melancholy this time around. She babbles, he notices, to fill the silence, which doesn't always work, but he doesn't always stop her.

Angel dusts the Master. There's no celebration. He doesn't stop there. He takes his anger (Hulk Smash, Xander comments once, to nobody's amusement) out on every vampire in town. Buffy would be proud, after her initial 'obsession much?' quip.

Giles quits his job and discovers liquor. They see him sometimes, around town. He smells like a brewery and Xander can't blame him, not really.

All they're doing is trying to cope. It's fucked-up, but it's coping. Just about.

They're out the night when Willow tries to kiss him, the night he almost lets her. Strangest part is, they're not even drunk. She's always loved him and he's always known, but there's a catch. There's always a catch.

There's this little (tiny, barely-there) flash of blonde hair in his mind and he pushes her away. With promises of 'still-friends,' of course. She looks hurt, but they all look hurt. They all look broken, nowadays.

x.

They go back to school and nobody remembers, other than a shitty obituary in a newspaper nobody reads anyway. It gets her last name wrong and lists her hobbies as 'cheerleading' but they tried, he admits. They tried, they always try.

He smiles and thinks he can move on.

Nighttime comes and Xander breaks all over again.

He goes to Giles in search of a quest. His excuse is his pride, because he wants to feel manly, he says, but in actuality, he just wants to feel something. Something good. Like, in the grand scheme of things, in the seven-billion or so people in the world, all the fucked-up happenings, he contributed.

"I'm not a Watcher," Giles tells him, sad smile played out over his face, "not anymore."

But he's still part of the Council, Xander notes. Still knows things. Things he tells Angel - yes, that's right, he's seen them whispering - and aren't they supposed to hate each other? They've formed their own Scooby Gang, their own private Buffy Squad and he hates it, hates it, because it's not what she would have wanted.

Isn't it?

x.

The We-Hate-Cordelia-Club disbands as soon as they find her in a dumpster somewhere, head torn from body and eyes wide open with shock. Front page news and it's a bloody sight, even if he hated her with all his heart. Cordelia Chase. Dead. It's a paradox. She wasn't supposed to die. He wasn't supposed to feel for her.

Buffy would have saved her. If only he had saved Buffy.

All his fault. It's all his fault and now they're both dead, the girl he loved and the girl he despised. Neither of them deserved it. Nobody reallydeserves death.

Well -

He thinks of himself and doesn't try to stop it. Xander Harris - suicidal maniac - this is your life.

Laughs a bit in his head at that one.

x.

They go to the funeral. Him, Willow, Giles, even Miss Calendar. Angel doesn't show, but he supposes they were never that close anyway.

Cordelia Chase. Sixteen Years old. The kindest spirit.

The first two are true. The third is a fairy-tale, woven by the people who didn't know her personally. Nobody speaks ill of the dead. It's a general rule.

People she bullied, men she refused to fuck, they all sob as the coffin is lowered, in memory of her smile. They forget how quickly, how easily it could have twisted into a smirk. How it produced some pretty vile words every now and again.

Xander wonders if he did that with Buffy. Glorified her. Before and After, but no. No, he can't have done, because she was perfect in the Beginning and perfect in the End.

In her white dress, so peaceful. So still. Blonde hair fanned out around her, green eyes still bright and shiny, mouth pursed in such a pretty, kissable way. It was only a trickle of blood. Just a trickle.

Xander watches the coffin - it's darker than Buffy's, a different wood - finally be buried and sighs.

x.

He goes to the Bronze, that night. Doesn't take Willow. He'll let her stay at home and cry. It's all she ever seems to do anymore, but he can't blame her. Can't blame her, because it's all his fault.

Xander toasts to Cordelia in the back of his mind, but it's mainly for Buffy. The Slayer. The Blinding Light of Good. The Girl He Forgot to Save.

Whoops. There he goes again, remembering.

Buffy.

Buffy.

Buff -

It's the hair. Something in the hair, or the face (the cheekbones, maybe), but the Blonde has a bit of Her in him. Or Xander's drunk. Either way works.

It's enticing, perhaps. He's enticing. Mysterious, but not in the Angel way. In the Buffy way, like before she spilled all her secrets, before they discovered her Slayerhood.

Vampire, his mind (or maybe it's Her subconscious imprint onto him, whatever) whispers to him, but he ignores it and follows the stranger. Out of the Bronze. Out the back and beyond into the darkness.

Vulnerable. He's vulnerable and he doesn't care, not really.

x.

"Well, well, well," the Blonde says, and he smells like cigarettes and leather, not quite like Her at all. "Got myself a nice catch, haven't I?"

"You're going to kill me." It's a simple enough statement and honest to God, Xander can't even be bothered to give a shit about it. Dying, that is. Maybe there's an After. Maybe she's there. And Jesse. And his dog, from childhood. And even Cordelia, maybe.

The Blonde smirks, that smug little smirk Buffy could've been capable of, if she wanted to. "Well, yeah." He gives a shrug, a 'no-bragging' gesture, but he's still grinning. "Was planning on it."

"Right." Xander stops. Makes his decision not to run and takes a step closer to his adversary. "Okay."

If the Blonde is surprised, he doesn't say, just raises an eyebrow.

Lunges, bites and holy brutal murder batman, Xander's dead. Just like that. It's strange, really. Painful, at first, but that disappears after a while.

He'd hoped for death.

He receives birth instead.

x.

It's funny, because Before, he'd always pictured coffins. Graves and burials and digging his way out of the dirt with his fingers. He wakes up in an alleyway somewhere, expectations totally destroyed. And hungry. Definitely hungry.

"Look who finally decided to wake up," the Blonde says, cigarette dangling in mouth, bloody corpse in hands. "Name?"

"Xander." He takes the carcass willingly, demon-Xander easily silencing the human in him that objects. "Harris."

"Spike."

"Spike?" Xander grins and his smile is red, red, red. All teeth, no lip. And fangs. Fangs. He has fangs now. "Cool."

Spike rolls his eyes (newbies, Xander sees him mouth to himself) and offers his hand. He leads him to some abandoned warehouse, in the parts of town Xander's never really explored and kicks down the door in a Buffylike manner.

The woman in greeting is a waif, so deliciously fragile he thinks he could break her. Her scent - her scent (he can do that now, smell things) tells him that she's not human, that she's like him. And that she's weak. Ill.

It's a sickness, he's come to realise. Living.

Except he's not, anymore. Not technically. But he's not dead, either. Not like Buffy. Not like Cordelia. Not like Jesse.

"Get some rest," Spike says, lighting his cigarette with an effortlessness that could only come from years of practice, "tomorrow, we feast."

And Xander lies awake and thinks of Willow. The demon whispers of her blood, of how it would taste, of the kiss and of turning her. But, the human whispers, but yellow crayon, but Buffy, but Jesse, but she tried to kiss him, but she loved him, but -

He stops thinking about Willow.

x.

Spike teaches him the tricks of the trade. 'Because you're not half-bad,' he tells him, 'and you're not as bloody annoying as Dru.'

Death, Xander learns, is not an art form. 'Contrary to the belief of certain wankers,' Spike comments, 'it's just a bit of fun.'

Oh and it is.

He stays away from Before, wherever he can. Picks up strangers on the outskirts of Sunnyhell (it's clever, he thinks, accurate) and drains them dry. That satisfies the bloodlust, but snapping their necks is nearly twice as amusing, he's found.

But one night, he's just out for a walk and Miss Jenny Calendar is humming that tune from the radio and it writes itself, really.

He always thought she was pretty. Not as pretty as Buffy, but nobody could ever be that pretty, not in a million years. Miss Calendar, with her smiles and shoulder-pats, with her red, red lips and clear skin.

Xander's seen the posters and heard the alerts since he's been gone. They weren't put up by his parents, that's for fucking sure. Three weeks, they wouldn't notice if he'd been missing for a year.

But Jenny, but Jenny and Giles and Willow too, they all probably had a hand. Ringing the radio, letting the local news know. They're the only person he's significant to, you see. Xander's just another Sunnydale fatality. Like Jesse. Like Buffy. Like Cordelia.

x.

(and now, oh, now, like Miss Calendar.

Xander's been a naughty boy, you see.)

x.

They bury the two of them that month.

He watches from the trees, as they lower her body into the ground.

Jenny Calendar. A Beautiful Light.

Giles is sobbing, even more so than when Buffy fell. It fuels Xander's anger, strangely enough, because they're forgetting.

There's just a grave for him, because they never found the body. Just presumed him dead, which isn't an unfair assumption. Poor little Xander, probably wandered off and did the wrong thing, again.

He couldn't even save Buffy, after all.

The crunch Jenny Calendar's neck made -

Well, maybe he has some traces of humanity left.

Xander Harris. Sixteen Years Old. Kindest Friend.

Willow's a wreck and he revels in the sight. Oh, Willow. Loyal to the end. His parents didn't make it. Willow and Giles and handful of students from Sunnydale High.

He's almost sad. Almost, almost, almost.

Then Willow's lips (the lips he claimed his own, the lips he refused) capture another boy's in a moment of grief and Xander's angry again.

No. Not angry. Furious.

x.

Daniel Osbourne. You Will Be Missed.

x.

And maybe Spike was right, because it's a hell of a rush, but maybe Spike was wrong, because it feels like an art form.

Murder, one by one.

It starts with Miss Calendar, but it doesn't end with Oz.

It carries on with Harmony Kendall (A Free Spirit) and Larry Blaisdell (Lit Up The Room) and Amy Madison (Friend To Everyone) and it doesn't end. It never ends. Spike laughs and calls him the 'Big Bad.' He's not a Big Bad. He's just starting to feel something again.

He stays away from Willow, because he loves her (in a purely platonic way, of course) and Giles, because Buffy loved him. They keep their lives, they go to the funerals and cry for people they barely knew.

But Xander forgets. He forgets, about Angel.

Angel who Buffy loved. Angel who would have done anything for her, Angel who she would have fucked, had nothing happened to her -

He'd seen her do it, Before. A stake in the heart.

(Angel who failed to save her)

There is Buffy and then there is black.

x.

And Xander is -

Xander is -

he's -

crumbling

crumbling

falling.

x.

(Xander Harris. He Changed The World.)

x.

I don't own Buffy, or the title of this fic, which belong to the Killers: Human. This is like ... my third time uploading this because I deleted my old account (which had this on it twice - the second time as an edited version) so if you think you've seen this before, don't worry! It's not stolen! There will be four more chapters. Next chapter will revolve around Spike.


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